Women’s Basketball: Terriers fall short against undefeated St. Joseph’s
By Luke Scotchie
After a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback, Boston University Women’s Basketball (4-3) lost a heartbreaker to the St. Joseph’s Hawks (7-0) by a final score of 65-61 at Hagan Arena.
Despite the loss, the Terriers put up a valiant effort led by senior guard Maggie Pina, who finished with 22 points on 7-for-11 shooting.
This was her best shooting game of the season so far, and BU Head Coach Melissa Graves said it proves how valuable Pina’s become to this team as a shooter, defender, and especially as a competitor.
“That’s the best thing about Maggie [Pina],” Graves said. “Ultimately she’s a competitor and she wants to win, and she’ll do anything to do that.”
Junior forward Caitlin Weimar notched her fifth double-double of the season with 16 points and 11 rebounds on 7-for-13 shooting, continuing a pattern of strong performances that Graves believes is turning her into a star.
“I’ve always told [Weimar] if she puts in the work, she can contend for Player of the Year next year,” Graves said. “She’s been doing that on and off the floor. She’s been putting in the work and she’s been playing at a really high level.”
Nine of Weimar’s 11 rebounds were defensive, an individual statistic that mirrors her team’s performance. The Terriers out-rebounded the Hawks defensively 30-26, including one from sophomore guard Lauren Davenport off a late missed free throw to keep the game alive.
St. Joseph’s won the game largely due to their success in offensive rebounding, but it would not have been nearly as close without BU winning it from the other side.
“[St. Joseph’s] ended up with 14 [offensive] boards, which was a lot,” Graves said. “But our goal was to out-rebound them today and win the rebounding battle, and we did that by one.”
Graves believes her team’s feisty defensive rebounding performance reflected the passion and energy her team brought to the game from start to finish.
“That’s just toughness and heart,” Graves said, “And I thought we showed both of those today.”
BU secured an early lead and maintained it until around two minutes in the first quarter, when a 3-pointer from St. Joseph’s Talya Brugler turned their 15-12 lead into a 15-15 tie.
Poor 3-point shooting from the Terriers in the first half (1-for-6) and getting out-rebounded 15-6 in the third quarter ensured that St. Joseph’s kept control for most of the game.
Multiple fourth-quarter scoring runs and stellar defense from the Terriers helped them chip away at the Hawks’ lead, eventually culminating in a 61-61 score with just under a minute left in the game.
“We got two stops, we got two scores, and they had to call timeout,” Graves said. “That actually gave us a lot of energy and momentum to finish the quarter.”
But the Terriers would not score again despite attempting two more shots, as four made free throws from St. Joseph’s finally sealed the game.
Even though the final score did not look how she wanted it to, Graves considers playing hard enough to nearly hand St. Joseph’s their first loss of their season a win in its own right.
“St. Joe’s is a very, very good team, very well-coached, being undefeated right now,” Graves said. “And us being the team that played them the closest – they played [Vanderbilt] and Temple and teams like that – to have that and walk away from the game knowing that, I told [the Terriers] they should be really proud of this.”
Graves said the team will not be dejected after this loss, but rather use it as motivation to improve and proof that they are a tougher team than their record suggests.
“We’re going to learn and watch film and learn about what we can fix,” Graves said. “But [the players] should be really proud of the effort that they put into this.”
The Terriers will return home to Massachusetts on Sunday to play Boston College at 2 p.m. at Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill.